We were #1 for personal sales in January through April this year… 4 months. For May, our group volume is going to double and our personal volume will probably be at least 50% higher. We have a bang up new associate who is selling online and another who is doing farmer’s markets and selling quite a bit. But also, we have found new ways to sell more product and we expect to grow through the summer.

Summer time is usually slow so we are very surprised to be continually growing. We are also going to be more profitable for May than April and hopefully we can carry that through the summer also.

Watkins Products are super high-quality gourmet, home care, personal care, and health-related products that customers are really catching on to! There is much room for growth… Watkins is a very small part of the market so we would like to see a Watkins product in every household. What that is going to take is more associates reaching out to more people. The products don’t sell themselves, we sell them.

If you have been looking at Watkins Products such as the Vanilla, Black Pepper, and or Cinnamon, but you’re just not sure about trying them out, try this: Send me an email at smi@foxvalley.net including your name and address, and we will send you out the Gold Medal Assortment consisting of the full-size Original Double-Strength Vanilla 11oz, Black Pepper 6oz, and Cinnamon 6oz.  We will send you an invoice and you can do one of two things: Pay us within 30 days or return the containers and you owe nothing.  The price for the Gold Medal Assortment is only $32.99 and we will charge $4.99 for shipping.  Again, you don’t have to pay up front and you can return the containers if you are not blown away by the vanilla, black pepper, and cinnamon.

The Gold Medal Assortment is called that because Watkins won gold medals for each of these products during the World’s Fair in the 1920′s.  The Vanilla is bake proof and freeze proof, double strength so that you only use half of what your recipe calls for, low alcohol, and made with the finest bourbon vanilla beans in the world!  The black pepper is made from the best parts of the peppercorn and is sneeze proof.  The cinnamon is granulated rather than ground and produces much less cinnamon dust than what you’ll find in other cinnamons.  These are all great products!

The opportunity to get the Gold Medal Assortment for trial is only available during May 2012, and only for residents of the lower 48 states, so request yours soon!

We wound up at the top of The Summit Group’s ranking for personal sales for the third month in a row. That makes January, February, and March at this point. Our group sales were a bit lower at #24 for the month of March. Sponsoring was good for us, having sponsored two in March, and that put us at #20, although we were tied with 8 associates… so I think we are actually tied for #13.

We continue to increase our sponsoring effort but our sales are also increasing too. In fact, they nearly doubled the last two week period compared with the two weeks before. However, like I said last month, I really don’t expect to be #1 for personal sales for April. We are actually in the process of making our inventory more lean… which means less purchases… and our personal volume will go down.

Otherwise, it is going to be a great next few months!

We have just found out that the samples we have been sending out in the past week cannot take the pressure of the U.S. Mail. Unfortunately, we are not sure who got which samples. If your samples didn’t survive the mail and leaked all over the literature, please feel free to either request the information again or email me at smi@foxvalley.net. We are so sorry for the inconvenience.

An update: Apparently the samples only exploded on one information packet. Everyone else is telling me the information and samples arrived in good shape.

Yes, you read it right. This is not our promotion, but the Summit Group’s. Join as a Watkins Associate within our group in April and receive a gift certificate redeemable for $50 in Watkins Products. The fact is, you will get more in free Watkins than it will cost you to join. So…. if you’re thinking about joining, now is the time.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this promotion.

Based on the tsgnet.com website, we were #29 in group volume for March. That is down a bit from February, but still respectable. We wound up over $4,000 in group volume for our third month in a row. We may or may not make #1 for personal sales again, only time will tell. But we were pretty close to February. (These results are Summit Group only)

In March we sponsored two associates personally, which is much better than the last few months before. We are going to try to do better with follow up in the coming months as Chris will be working for the business full time beginning April 2nd. We are currently following up with postcards, but we expect to make calls, at least to Summit Group co-op leads. By the way, we have sponsored all but one new associate with the Summit Co-op. It has been a really good source of leads for new associates.

I never really thought we could maintain volume over $4,000, but we just keep selling more and finding new places to sell. Watkins Products have a really good demand among customers who know them, and we are introducing new customers to the products. As a whole, Watkins could be looking at a complete rebirth. With the economy growing again, opportunities abound!

I know it’s not always easy to get started, I mean it took us nearly 20 years to take off… But when you consider that we’ve only put our full effort into the business the past two, it’s really not that bad. If you become an associate, put your entire self into the business. Become a Watkins Associate, don’t just join. Be willing to put yourself out there and talk about what you do. Carry business cards. Give away a bit of product. Be excited about what you’re doing. Ignore the negative… because people will be negative, thinking they are doing you a favor.

If you are a Watkins Associate in any group, I urge you to comment about your experiences with Watkins.

While we were #1 in February, we probably will not repeat in March, just letting you know. By the way, this is not #1 in all of Watkins, just within the 6,000 Summit Group members. I am not sure what personal sales looks like for other Watkins Associates, it’s possible that some do beat us.

We are actually redirecting our company to slowly build on our sales, but to focus more on bringing new associates aboard. We have proven, though, that Watkins Products can be sold.

Sales have been fairly steady… I keep waiting to see if we made #1 in sales volume again in February, but the numbers have not yet been posted by Summit. We did ship another gallon of vanilla and a gallon of the foaming hand soap. We sponsored a new associate in March. Chris is quitting her job (gave notice) and is going to be the VP of Operations for Satterlee Marketing full time beginning April 2. This will get orders out of the door sooner and have somebody manning the phones during the day. She will have many other duties also, will probably keep her very busy and allow me to focus more on consulting.

Watkins has been selling surprisingly well in March. We raised our prices online and lost a bit of volume, but not much. When people want the product, they want the product. One place has been better than the rest but we have made a couple of sales in various marketplaces. We have also gotten telephone orders this month.

I had a prospect from the Manager Lead program that seems to be very excited to get going, so maybe he will be a signup in the near future. Hoping for more good leads as magazine advertisements roll out. Yes, we have classifieds in various places such as Entrepreneur and Inc magazines.

We are starting to look at making the web site better and producing some new videos. I have been talking to my son about some ideas. He has been doing background work for various TV shows in LA but does have some time to work on video or website projects. If you wonder, he has been doing a lot of Glee, GCB, House, Hart of Dixie, and various other places. He is in the GCB commercial that shows the back of the cheerleader when her top pops open, he is in the stands wearing a blue shirt.

That’s about it for now. I will let you know ASAP how we ranked in the Summit Group once the stats are posted.

Here we are in March, and February was really good. I mean really, really good. We topped our January personal sales numbers. So are we still #1 for central sales in February? Only time will tell…

We have been starting to see more prospects ask for free information from us. Three yesterday, one today so far. Probably 2 – 5 per day would be good. There are plenty of people out there that are looking to start a business now, with the economy getting better. We have had a hard time reaching business people until recently… it seems like we’re doing pretty well now.

We expect sales to be slower in March than February as we have become less competitive on pricing… our direct sales have always been at suggested retail but we often shipped without a shipping fee. We now charge $4.99. Our online sales were competitive with others on price, now we price at least at suggested retail. Ebay has been a little hotter recently but the majority of our sales comes from somewhere else.

We are trying to expand our sales efforts but are struggling to do so. It takes a lot of work to setup a new place and there are so many online.

Just wanted to share with you all that we were able to reach the top of the Summit Group list for personal sales for January 2012, and we achieved manager level. For February, we may even top those sales numbers and earn our $500 bonus. Wonder how we do it? Join our group and find out!

We also have some growing associates in our group that are doing very well. I am excited by your accomplishments!